Steve Stefan Molyneux (born 1966) is an British Irish-Canadian political activist, amateur philosopher, and Internet pundit who hosts Freedomain Radio, a podcast where he discusses philosophy, politics, religion, science, and relationships, since 2005. He also writes regularly for anarcho-capitalist websites and has self-published several books. Molyneux has a group of very ardent fans, even though he is only questionably an ancap at this point, and is hated by a large portion of them: he defends cops, is a "racial realist", says weird red pill things about women, and is a hawk on Mid East relations. He presents a crank magnetism chimera of men's rights crybaby, white rights crybaby and some sort of fedora-lover's Glenn Beck[2] (or a thinking man's RooshV) who is known for mistreating his guests. He is allegedly a grown man but spent 42 minutes complaining about Beauty and the Beast. Really.

As of November 2017, Stefan had over 690,000 subscribers and 200 million views,[3] as well as 260,000 Twitter followers.[4]

Molyneux rejects the idea that parents deserve unconditional love and respect from their children.
Especially, he believes that adults who deem their parents to be physically or psychologically aggressive should cease all connections with them, if previous attempts to mend any faulty relationships have failed, or resulted in begging for "unearned forgiveness".[5]

“So face it: your parents were bullies, or weak curriers of favor, or manipulative emotional infants themselves. You have no respect for them, for respect requires courage, and courage requires logical morality. You do not love them, since love demands virtue, and manipulating children into blind obedience is not at all virtuous.”

He also claims that people who engage in or are drawn to contact sports were abused as children and/or had aggressive childhoods.[6] He has said that he would have killed his mother had she not been his mother.[7]

“”I think it's time to swivel that motherfucker around and point at women and say, "Stop making yourself look like fucking sex clowns to milk money out of men's dicks. Stop lying about who you are and what you're about."

Single mothers are an important issue of our time,[11][12] and a demographic in need of attack:

"Women who choose the assholes will fucking end this race. They will fucking end this human race if we don't start holding them a-fucking-countable. Women who choose assholes guarantee child abuse. Women who choose assholes guarantee criminality. Sociopathy. Politicians. All the cold-hearted jerks who run the world came out of the vaginas of women who married assholes, and I don't know how to make the world a better place without holding women accountable for choosing assholes! Your dad was an asshole because your mother chose him, because it works on so many women! If "asshole" wasn't a great reproductive strategy, it would have been gone long ago. Women keep that black bastard flame alive. They cup their hands around it. They protect it with their bodies...Keep fucking monsters, we get catastrophes, we get war, we get nuclear weapons, we get national debts, we get incarcerations and prison guards and all the other florid assholes who rule the world. Women worship at the feet of the devil and wonder why the world is evil.[13]

In one video, he sees being nice to a woman as "a white knight" reaction to "PROTECT THE EGGS." That's not hyperbole, he really shouts PROTECT THE EGGS.[14]

For an "anarchist", Stefan doesn't mind the state all that much, so long as it acts the way he wants it to.

He used to be very adamantly opposed to voting, due to being an "anarchist".[18] But as with many right-libertarians, that all changed when Donald Trump ran for President.[19] Trump fans have taken to posting his "Untruth about Donald Trump" video as a "red pill" on Reddit and elsewhere,[20] and the alt-right blog The Right Stuff features its 'donations' widget with a parody of his accent and a small image of him at the bottom. Stormfront entertains the possibility but rejects him for being too Jewish.[21]

He praised Margaret Thatcher upon her death in 2013, despite claiming to oppose all forms of government.[22]

During the Ebola crisis he said that government should stop people traveling from West Africa.[23][24] He has since gone on to say he also supports banning people from traveling from predominately non-white North Africa, Middle East and Asian countries.[25][26]

It's worth mentioning that Molyneux himself was against closed borders during his earlier embrace of the free market. Those videos have been scrubbed from his channel since shift towards the alt-right, though this hasn't stopped in-show callers from reminding him of this, such as 2016's "Andrew". In this video, Andrew points out that supporting violent coercion against refugees is incompatible with NAP. Stefan responds by claiming that morality doesn't apply within a statist society. A few moments later he goes back to saying that it does.[27]

In the wake of Nelson Mandela's death:

The tragic fact of business is that ordinary Africans were better off under colonialism. Colonial masters never committed anything near the murder and genocide seen under black rule in Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Nigeria, Mozambique, and other countries, where millions of blacks have been slaughtered in unspeakable ways, which include: hacking to death, boiling in oil, setting on fire and dismemberment."[28]

He pushes the Lost Cause of the South.[30] Around 1:52, he starts arguing that the majority of slaves across the world were white people, and proceeds to hit every single Neo-Confederate target (e.g., black people should shut up about slavery because chattel slavery wasn't that bad and white people are the real victims).[31]

Watch for the look of surprise on Molyneux's face during his "they should have just paid for the slaves" argument on The Joe Rogan Show. Rogan asks where all the money for the slaves was going to come from. "Taxation?"[32]

Stalineux[sic] holds an unconventional view on homosexuality, arguing that it is the result of childhood sexual abuse.[33] He later apologized for the comment when contacted by a caller during a radio interview, saying he had reversed his views on the matter and would do his best to improve his understanding of homosexuality. He also promised to edit the video to better reflect his ignorance of the previous statements.[34] The video remains unedited.

“”The Bad Philosophy Show, where we tell people the wrong thing to do! Wouldn't that be funny? right? 'Cos, then, you know, they'd just flip it then they'd get the right thing... "If you want to lose weight, eat cheesecake." "If you want to jump up, fall down."

Molyneux has declared himself "the savior of philosophy" and styles himself as a New Socrates,[38][39] though he doesn't actually engage any scholarly literature on issues of philosophy. He used to be an Objectivist, but now considers himself an ancap and advocates UPB (Universally Preferable Behavior), his own moral theory which appears to be Kantianismwith the serial numbers filed off. He doesn't credit any philosophers for having influenced him, though he routinely makes arguments famous philosophers (usually Locke) have made many times in the past without attribution, and misinterprets famous philosophical arguments and writings; his lecture on the social contract is an excellent example.[40]

Molyneux has claimed that Freedomain Radio is the most popular online philosophy conversation in the world, despite no backing to such a claim. His support amongst actual philosophers is questionable as well. In 2007, fellow libertarian (and actual philosopher) David Gordon gave a critical examination of Molyneux in The Mises Review: "He fails, and fails miserably. His arguments are often preposterously bad."[41]

Popular YouTuber SisyphusRedeemed, who is an academic philosopher, uploaded another great rebuttal.[42]

One thing he may share with Socrates is that it would probably take hemlock to shut him up.

“”This radical simplification of huge stretches of history is misleading, but it's necessary in order to make the sorts of comparisons to modern times Stefan is making...Stefan mentions that it's difficult for the Republicans to get elected. And, well, it was very difficult indeed for anyone to be elected Emperor [in Rome] because they didn't have elections.

Molyneux defends his more...unusual beliefs with historical examples. These are invariably healthy servings of PIDOOMA. He has, for example, claimed that the First World War was more destructive than the Second, and that the majority of casualties in it were members of the aristocracy.[45] This is a self-evident argument for free trade, apparently.

Molyneux has gone on record against the DMCA and IP law, saying that "IP must die" as it is an unjustified use of force.[47][48] He believes this is a universal principle with no exceptions.

However he also used IP law in order to censor critics on YouTube by filing DMCA claims against them, with the most notable being "TruShibes," who created a YouTube account dedicated to clips documenting Molyneux's questionable behavior and philosophy.[49] He blamed this on a contractor.[50]

In a textbook case of actions having consequences, TruShibes has filed a case in US federal court against Molyneux for his blatant exploitation of the DMCA to shut down her account, for silencing her and for defaming her afterwards[51][52] (she is in the US and he is in Canada, but his YouTube activity and income is US-based and constitutes a local presence). Of course, it's no surprise he resorted to censorship. That is what Stef does if he doesn't have anything to say. Raised a good question on FDR? Banned. Contradicted Stef on his show? Cuts the caller off. Wrote a blog punching holes in Stef or his philosophy? Come on and verbally debate him![53]Hey, isn't it textbook for a cult leader to go to any lengths to silence criticism or dissidence...?

If you buy Stef's logic, you went to public school because you are a brainwashed sheeple[54][55] that can't comprehend the glory and pure truth of UPB, NAP and anarcho-capitalism—or his wife's equally obnoxious stance that you're aware of it, but such a transition would be uncomfortable, and therefore you subconsciously deny it out of childlike spite.

Molyneux decided that Leonard Nimoy's passing was the appropriate time to talk about how Spock's collectivism was "emotional" in nature and how big government (the socialist United Federation of Planets) is a bad thing.[56] Similarly, he posted a video on Robin Williams' suicide, leaping at the chance to psychoanalyze the actor (without ever having met him, of course).[57] Kicking a still-warm corpse: Another philosophical victory for libertarians!

“”In other words, a popular Auschwitz guard with a long marriage is the very definition of mental health. Moral considerations do not form the basis of mental heath – a compliant Nazi is considered more ‘healthy’ than an outcast one. This form of ‘social ethics’ is largely due to the Jewish influence over psychology.

Molyneux has denied that mental illnesses are real, saying there is not enough evidence to prove otherwise. He also calls psychiatry a pseudoscience and claims that it is part of a government agenda.[59] This has drawn the ire of many, including online scientific skeptic Emil Karlsson of Debunking Denialism who responded with a lengthy refutation of his claims.[60] Now, he's right that mental illnesses is culturally defined (though the anti-semitism came out of nowhere);[note 1] if your culture favors extremely fastidious people, somebody with "checking" type OCD may not be considered abnormal. But it certainly exists independent of cultural context, with various causes ranging from environment to dietary to genetic to neurological. It's convenient for Molyneux to foist everything onto "society" because it feeds into his viewers' self-entitlement and moral relativism, while ignoring the cultural context behind, say, private property.

The only meaningful outcome of the aforementioned 'meeting of the impotent minds' was Potholer54 taking the time to explain the utter wrongess of climate change denial, by using their convoluted discussion as a teaching example.[63]

The irony here is that a lot of modern engineering (cough electricity cough), would not be possible if it weren't for physics, but the assumption is natural given that Stefan has absolutely no understanding of it. What's more, he now claims his mind transcends physics.[65] All in a day's work for Molyneux, and perfectly in line with his M.O. of being the clogosphere's prime libertarian narcissicist übermensch.

Molyneux's attitudes and beliefs, coupled with the slavish devotion of his listeners, has led Sam Seder and his associates to label him a cult leader. This view is echoed by parents whose children abandoned them on Molyneux's advice.[66][67][68]

His method is popular with fundamentalist Churches (or Scientology's practice of "disconnecting"): before you were baptized and saved, your life was full of sin.[69] Now your baptism ("defoo" in Molynese)[70] represents a new life in Christ and your acceptance of the Church's teachings. However, in the case of the Manson Molyneux Family, it's a baptism in hack philosophy and an-cappery. For instance, Molyneux advises people to abandon all friends and relatives who are not anarcho-capitalists or adherents to the Non-Aggression Principle. Because this is off-putting to any, well, sane person, he takes the cultish route of hiding the core tenets from newcomers.[71] Those who ditch their families and friends are insultingly advised that the next step in saving the world is to plug his show.

If you want to perform the greatest service for political liberty, all you have to do is turf all of your unsatisfying relationships. Parents, siblings, spouse, it doesn’t matter.[72]

If you have non-voluntaryist friends you may want to spend the holidays alone reconsidering your definition of friend![73]

Hopefully, every Ancap will take his advice so that next X-mas they won't be invited back.

He has some, uh, "interesting" views on movies, and likes to read Randian meanings where they definitely don't belong. The real kicker was him remarking on having to "reprogram" his daughter after watching the film Maleficent. He thinks any female character with a lack of character flaws is propaganda to indoctrinate children; evidently, it is dishonest for "Estrogen-based parasites"[75] to have any positive portrayals in media at all. He basically uses his daughter to assert arguments; a "think-of-the-children" card of sorts.

Molyneux has amassed a small fortune in Bitcoin, apparently entirely from donations.[76] He claims to have connections to Satoshi Nakamoto and the original development group survivor, Steven Wright (He worked on the page numbers).[citation needed]

A civil court complaint, filed in 2014, says Mr. Molyneux boasted in a 2006 podcast that he would listen while his wife (a therapist who severed contact with her parents to join his AynCrap cult)[77] talked to her patients, even interjecting and railroading them into subscribing to his website.[78] Just what any mentally-disturbed person needs: Stefan's voice filtering eerily through an intercom.

Somehow, his wife kept her license,[79] as she didn't actively propagate Molyneux's insanity (despite him obviously coaching her in all matters personal and professional),[74][80][81] but it is clear she bases her therapy around "defoo'ing" people—prying them away from their families—and cultivating donors to FDR. All podcasts with even a whisper from Christina, including the laughable "Ask A Therapist" series, have been scrubbed from the website and any mention of her results in a swift ban on the forums.

↑We stand corrected. He is not an anti-Semite, because Murray "Baby Market" Rothbard is one of his favorite philosophers! This old post was thankfully still in the Google cache; he deleted the thread (probably out of embarrassment). He could never fault Rothbard's ideology or call him immoral, so he has to go with 'it is because he was circumcised so he doesn't know any better'. "DAE Jews probably all hate their kids because foreskin."